NBA Pick: New York Knicks @ Charlotte Bobcats Preview

The Charlotte Bobcats have a chance to make a dubious piece of basketball history on the final day of the NBA’s regular season when they try to beat the NBA odds against the New York Knicks.

The Knicks are one of the handful of teams that are going to be playing for something on Thursday night, knowing that they need a win or a loss by the Philadelphia 76ers to lock up the No. 7 seed in the East. They would most certainly rather be taking on the Miami Heat than the Chicago Bulls in the first round, making this game a must-win in all likelihood for that to happen. New York was able to put away the Los Angeles Clippers last night, making it a whopping 18-6 ATS overall in its last 24 games. The Knicks got another 17 points out of Carmelo Anthony, but those came in limited minutes. It is clear that Head Coach Mike Woodson is going to be playing it close to the vest in this one, as he would rather make sure that he goes into the postseason with a healthy roster, even if it meant the embarrassment of losing to the lowly Bobcats on the final day of the regular season.

It’s not all that often that we get a chance to talk about the Bobcats, but this is a great opportunity to do so, knowing that they are on national television for this one. A loss tonight, and they go down in NBA history as being the worst team ever in terms of winning percentage, as they would wrap up the year at 7-59, a lowly .106 winning percentage. The team is being outscored by 13.8 points per game this year, ranking dead last in the league offensively and No. 27 defensively. No team has ever come close to pulling off this feat in league history, making this team truly historically awful. Charlotte has also dropped 22 games in a row, and a loss in this one ties the team for the third longest losing streak in the history of the NBA. Yikes. To make matters worse, Derrick Brown got hurt last night against the Orlando Magic, meaning that Tyrus Thomas is likely going to end up having to start, which will only make this team all the more awkward offensively speaking.

The Final Word: We will say this about Charlotte’s efforts last night: The team did fight hard for the mass majority of the game. The Bobcats do have the potential to get into the win column, and they seriously would treat it like winning the Super Bowl if they were to pull off the upset on Thursday night. That being said, these are still the Bobcats that we are talking about, and if New York decides that it wants to win this game, it will do just that by whatever margin that it wants.

Adam Markowitz

is a staff writer living in the Orlando area. He has covered NFL, MLB, college football, CFL, AFL, NBA, college basketball, NASCAR, golf, tennis, and the NHL for a number of various outlets in his career, and he has been published by a number of different media outlets, including the Orlando Sentinel and the Wall Street Journal.